Starting to feel like the closest thing to Chandler, Ross MacDonald writes with a good deal of the classic wit and metaphor and what is lacking is made up for in colourful characters and social insight.
This follows the classic MacDonald mold of being a family drama disguised as a detective story and really focuses in on the sadness and bitterness that can be encountered by the rich and well-to-do. Lew Archer tries to maintain a professional distance but has all the humanism of Marlowe and is inevitably suckered in by the people around him.
The only thing that let this down for me was a slight waning of momentum towards the end and a "whodunnit" explanation that made me feel a little short-changed. However, it is the journey not the destination, the style not the substance that matters to me and this has characters, locations and scenes that were fresh and will stay in my memories for books to come.
Not a masterpiece but the first signs of a master plying his trade.
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